Soldiers' bodies are returned to UK

Hundreds of people have turned out to pay their respects to six soldiers killed in Afghanistan as their bodies returned to British soil.

Five were shot dead by a "rogue" Afghan police officer at a secure checkpoint in Nad-e-Ali in Helmand Province on November 3 in an attack claimed by the Taliban.

Two days later, Serjeant Phillip Scott, 30, of 3rd Battalion The Rifles, was killed by an improvised explosive device near Sangin in Helmand.

The five killed by the rogue policeman were Warrant Officer Class 1 Darren Chant, 40, Sergeant Matthew Telford, 37, and Guardsman Jimmy Major, 18, from the Grenadier Guards, died alongside Corporal Steven Boote, 22, and Corporal Nicholas Webster-Smith, 24, from the Royal Military Police.

After a private chapel ceremony for families at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire, hearses carrying their Union flag-draped coffins were driven to the High Street of nearby Wootton Bassett for a memorial procession.

Under cloudy skies and drizzling rain, soldiers lined the streets of the town alongside Royal British Legion veterans, shopkeepers and residents to pay tribute to the fallen men.

As the cortege passed along the High Street, silence fell, broken only by the chiming bells of St Bartholomew and All Saints Church. Standard-bearers from the Royal British Legion lowered their flags as the coffins passed by. As the procession paused by the war memorial, which was covered in floral tributes, roses and wreaths were placed on the hearses by relatives and friends.

Tearful family members wept as the coffins drove by - some wearing T-shirts bearing the name of their fallen loved one. The procession then continued to Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital, where post-mortem examinations will be completed.

It was Wootton Bassett's 98th repatriation and Anne Bevis, treasurer of the town's Royal British Legion branch, said support from the townspeople would not wane.

"Each repatriation is different, and it does not get any easier" she said. "The way the five soldiers died has shocked people. Roadside bombs and being shot can be expected in wartime, but training someone and working alongside them for them to turn on you is shocking. It must be terrible for their colleagues to have to carry on, but they go on because they have to."